When celebrating a special occasion, a decorated cake is often purchased and candles and other party paraphernalia are placed onto the cake. Such party paraphernalia may include small plastic novelties and signs, e.g., Happy Birthday, Happy Anniversary.
One drawback of having a party cake is all too often, children receive a piece of cake and do not finish the entire cake as the piece is mis-proportioned. Also, if the size of the cake is not suited to the number of people eating the cake, then a portion of the cake will likely be leftover. Storing a remainder of a cake is cumbersome as it must be wrapped and refrigerated to preserve it for subsequent consumption.
Another drawback of a cake is that it is often uniform, i.e., has the same composition throughout. Thus, if the cake is a chocolate cake and a person does not like chocolate cake, then they will not partake of the dessert.
Thus, it would be ideal if an alternative dessert could be provided which allows for each children and adult to have a more accurate portion, to avoid the need to handle cake leftovers and which enables different types of desserts.
As discussed below, all of these advantages can be realized by using cookies as the dessert because cookies are small so that a child or adult can take as many or as few as they want. Also, any remaining cookies are easily stored and maintain their freshness to a much greater degree than a leftover portion of cake. In addition, cookies come in a variety of different flavors, e.g. chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal cookies, so that different varieties of cookies might be simultaneously presented as dessert so that each person can take whatever flavor they prefer.
A problem arises in that there is no convenient way to package and sell cookies in a form in which they can be displayed and served as dessert.
Furthermore, the cookie market is fairly mature and stable for the foreseeable future. Increasing or maintaining market share for cookies has almost exclusively resided with advertising and marketing. The typical packaging of cookies has either been in tray, sleeve, bag or tin form. The tray and sleeve format are generally used as they are highly efficient, while the bag and tin form are designed to impart a feeling of tradition and quality to the consumer. In recent years, wholesalers have started baking and selling their own cookies and packaging them in what typically amounts to a plastic tin thereby allowing a purchaser to see the cookie being purchased.
Other recent developments appear to be the marketing and selling of cookie bars. In this case, the form of the product is being changed to better compete with the granola and candy bar market which has been and continues to be an alternative snack food to the traditional cookie.
Attempts are not known to have been made to alter the packaging or displaying of cookies to compete with another bakery product such as a cake.
With respect to prior art relating to displaying bakery products, U.S. Pat. No. 5,413,801 (McIlwain) describes an apparatus for serving cupcakes in the form of a cake. A series of support members 12, 14, 18 are arranged on top of one another to define three circular tiers 16, 20 and 22, respectively, with the tiers decreasing in size in the vertical direction. The support members 12, 14 and 18 are connected by a skewer 28 with a candle 30 being placed on the upper end of the skewer 28. The cupcakes 32 are placed in each tier so that when the tiers are full of cupcakes, the resulting product appears like a cake (see FIG. 1).
U.S. Pat. No. 3,843,220 (Snider) describes a multi-layer cake made of a series of containers 11-14 each having a hollow interior in which wrapped cake pieces 16 are placed. By raising each container 11-14, the cake pieces therein are exposed and ready to be served.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,844,243 (Stiles) describes a holder for baked goods such as cupcakes. The holder is in the form of a portion of a hemisphere and has cavities 12 each receivable of a cupcake.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,334,497, Des. 289,220 and Des. 403,558 generally describe a cake having party favors thereon and cookie bouquets.
These patents do not disclose a cake-shaped mold capable of receiving and displaying cookies and a method for packaging cookies in a cake-shaped mold.